Currently…

I am a very slow writer. As a result, posts tend to lag what I am currently thinking and doing. This page gets updated whenever I start or stop something and is therefore fairly up to date.

TL;DR

It is highly likely we will spend the next three years based in Mountain View, with extended time yearly in Portland. Our planned locations in 2025:

  • Jan: Turkey and the Kenya encouraging staff and students plus a bit of teaching scratch.
  • Feb: Santa Rosa, Columbus, Riverside
  • Mar-June: Bay Area with short trip(s) to Taipei, Napa, Sierras, Big Sur
  • July: Yosemite, Appalachian Trail section hike (the Whites), Maine, Wedding in NH
  • Aug-Dec: some combination of Bay Area, Portland, Columbus
  • 2026 mostly in Bay Area but in May walking Portuguese Way starting in Porto.

I am focused on

  • Identifying and practicing simple, core truths which are at the heart of human flourishing. My short list right now is love, community (with a particular focus on church), gratitude->generosity, working hard / developing mastery.
  • Coaching / mentoring engineering leaders, writing down lessons from my career.

2023/2024 Retro

Think like a Scientist

It is my observation that many people don’t “think”… they just react and/or go with the flow. It said that an unexamined life is not worth living. I would rather say an unexamined life is a squandered life, missing a richness and countless opportunities. Too many people are “insane”… repeating the same behavior while expecting the results to change. Life should be lived as a giant experiment… Have a theory which is falsifiable, run an experiment, evaluate the results, update theory, repeat.

There are many things which can help people think more clearly.

  • Reasoning from First Principals. Systems Thinking, Models based thinking
  • Exploring alternatives such as championed by de Bono: lateral thinking, thinking hats, etc
  • Minimizing bias
  • Various other meta-cognition techniques

Simple Truths for Human Thriving

I have become increasingly convinces that are a small number of critical insights, values, perspectives, practices that lead to human thriving. A key tool is simplicity, or essentialist. It’s not adding more to live, but knowing what to subtract. For the last few years I found it liberating to trim down the my stuff. In the last few years I was most happy when I had just 15l of stuff.

I think the secret to a thriving life is quite simply to state “Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself” but very challenging to live out. The maturituring process has several keys:

  • Making “Love” the highest value, the controlling theme of life
  • Building relationship with others and investing in community. See so thoughts about community
  • Cultivating gratitude which results in generosity
  • Working hard to build mastery

Community

I would love to find an ideal community… but of course that doesn’t exist. I know the best way to “find” a community is to build one. Invest time and love into a group of people. To have the perspective of an investor rather than consumer. Key ingredients seem to be: people having margin (slack), value other people more than things or achievement, have learned Maslow’s lesson that self transcendence > self actualization.

  • Community is the environment that allows humans to flourish. It’s where love is practiced and the where people grow.
  • What are the ingredients that make intentional communities thrive or fail.
  • Walking the camino let me witness how quickly community can form when people have time, have a common bond, and choose kindness / vulnerability. It breaks my heart that so many people experienced community and deep acceptance for the first time while walking the Camino. We need to do better.
  • Bridging political divides. Wondering if a developmental approach to politics might overcome the failing of centrism. Thinking about how Marshall Rosen’s Non Violent Communication can be applied to mediation. I have been intrigued by citizen assemblies.
  • Working on writing down what I have learned about what makes a healthy church. First bit is church essentials.

Technology & Business

I had a good career and worked with some amazing people. I learned a lot. I tried to pass those lessons on to my coworkers and people I mentored. I am now trying pass those lessons on to the next generation.

  • How to become a good software engineer and systems designer. For example, read classic system papers.
  • Help a friend develop a SecDevOps leadership curriculum for his university
  • Writing down some of the lessons I learned during my career with a focus on building a healthy culture and be a strong technical leader.

How to Have a Good Healthspan

… and put those thinking into practice. Inspired by Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, Peter Attia, and my personal study of the material.

  • Recovering from a frozen shoulder Completed!
  • Do a comprehensive health exam -Completed
  • Updating my body weight exercise regiment – Completed
  • Learn Tai Chi – In process
  • Get good at jump rope and other things to improve balance
  • VO2max >46 in 2025.

Later

Home Base? / Random Travel

We lived a semi-nomadic existence from 2021-2024 as determined where to plant ourselves for the next season of life. Staying in the Bay Area has a lot going for it, but is expensive and people are busy, career driven and transactional, so the area is fairly toxic to healthy community. Looking for a place where we have opportunities to contribute to the community, a vital church we can serve at, weather than is friendly to outdoor activities, and ideally has reasonable cost of living. We want a medium size multi-cultural city with at least one university, and the resources needed to do good design work. Extra credit for cities that don’t require a car (e.g. walkable, effective mass transit).

Our initial list of possible home bases included Bay Area (SF, Berkeley, Mid-Penisula), San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Santa Rosa/Sebastopol, Portland/Vancouver, Seattle, Las Vegas, Austin, Denver/Boulder, Madison, Boston, DC/Northern Virgina, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Asheville, and Nashville. We eliminated many of these cities after just a couple of weeks trying them out. We also considered international destinations which included Malaysia, Costa Rica, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Cypress. We love Aukland, Melbourne, and several UK cities, but they aren’t practical given their strict immigration policies.

Vancouver/Portland scored pretty high. We love the city’s ethos, made good friends in a few months, can regularly visit the Portland Japanese garden, and enjoy the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Housing is much more reasonably priced than the Bay Area, where isn’t? :). It is also closer to our two oldest kids. We have both enjoyed The Well Church, and Mark appreciates Bridgetown Church. As an extra bonus, Washington has no state income tax, Portland has not sales tax. The biggest downside is the dark/cold/wet winter which is many months long.

We have concluded that for now the Bay Area (our home in Mountain View) is going to be our home base. We will strive to construct a counter formational space for people who would want to embrace deep friendship and community. Hopefully this will go well… if not, we will need to consider basing somewhere else. We will be spending regular, extended time in Portland… it’s going to be a “second home” for us, with trips to Taipei and Columbus to spend time with our aging parents. We will also periodically take 1-3 week trips to experience life and cultures outside the US.